


everything, almost

by iyzze



Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Jealousy, almost no plot substance, apologies to my token straight boy, enter Parentheses lmao, i lowkey ship the three of them together but we won't talk about that, i'm not tagging it hazel/amina but just know that i thought of it, i'm rambling oof, it's bc my hindbrain thinks pre-alexander post-amina, prose if you will, this is /experimental/ writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:00:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28887240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iyzze/pseuds/iyzze
Summary: AU where Daisy and Hazel aren't friends (yet) and it's Hazel that's jealous of Amina.Quite a gentle read, if only because this was written quickly.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	everything, almost

**Author's Note:**

> A little idea I've had for a few months, finished because of a discussion in the mmu discord (<3)

  
  


In many ways, Amina was a combination of everything that Hazel was and everything that Hazel was not. She was unusually tall where Hazel was short, she was louder and more confident than anyone else Hazel knew (barring Daisy, of course) whereas Hazel knew herself to be painfully shy - and she was foreign, similarly to Hazel. They were both outsiders, in a way - Amina just seemed to wear it better, almost. 

When Hazel had first joined Deepdean, she had stood out to an unbearably uncomfortable degree - the only non-white, non-English student, she had found herself picked last for teams and eating alone most mealtimes. To contrast, Amina had become almost instantly popular, a magnetic personality and dazzling confidence drawing people towards her like moths to a flame. Hazel resented her, almost - she wondered; what was it about Amina that made her so like and so unlike Hazel herself? 

Perhaps Hazel had broken the ice or paved the way for Amina, her introduction breaking away the expectations and initial hostility of the rest of the Deepdean population, unwittingly making it so that Amina would have everything that Hazel never quite did. Amina was fame where Hazel was infamy - so close, so connected, yet not the same thing at all. 

Perhaps it was Amina’s confidence, her acknowledgement that although she may be different, that didn’t make her less - she seemed proud of everything that she was, personally and culturally, and she drew attention to herself deliberately and with great control. People knew her name, her face - to a certain extent, they knew her. Nobody knew Hazel, not like that. When Hazel had joined Deepdean, she had been nervous and hesitant to reach out to people and make friends - in many ways she had felt herself to be less than those around her, simply by virtue of standing out in all the wrong ways - but Amina never seemed to think there was a wrong way to stand out.

Perhaps it was confidence and pride that gave Amina the edge - perhaps her willing portrayal of herself as ‘ _exotic_ ’ endeared her to the other girls. (Exotic was a word Hazel had once heard used to describe her, but wasn’t entirely willing to use herself.) Hazel had never been branded exotic - foreign, maybe (as in _‘odd’_ , _‘_ o _ther_ ’, _‘unknown_ ’) - it wasn’t a label she could ever dream of using to empower herself, not like Amina flaunted exoticness (as in _‘striking’_ , _‘attractive’_ ). In a way, Hazel and Amina each found themselves targeted for being different, but they were perceived so very differently that it was hard for most to see similarities at all.

In many ways, the way in which Hazel viewed Amina was unhealthy. Her vague obsession blurred the lines between jealousy, envy and admiration - she wanted to be Amina almost as much as she wanted to be like Amina (but she could never quite see herself achieving either). In truth, Hazel’s fixation on everything Amina did was nothing short of distressing - but she didn’t care, so focused on an internal desire for everything Amina had that she did not.

Amina had friends that she could count on when Hazel seemed ever-alone, she had an easy camaraderie with teachers (who never seemed as put off with her as they were with Hazel, and she always asked herself why, why her, why was it always her?) - but there was one thing that Amina had that Hazel longed for the most: Amina had Daisy Wells.

They were close friends, not particularly closer than any other duo that Hazel knew, but they were close. And it stung Hazel - she had spent months trying to cultivate an uneasy friendship with Daisy (to very little avail), and Amina had seemed to achieve more than that within the time it took for her to unpack her things at the start of term. In all likelihood, it was this friendship that had Hazel so green with envy and so red with rage - it truly felt almost entirely unfair that Amina had almost everything Hazel wanted, with hardly any of the work (this was its own issue, complex and difficult - Amina truly only existed how she pleased, and it just so happened to please others).

Nothing ever really happened between them - Hazel was resentful to the point of hostility, but self-conscious enough to avoid confrontation (it was like she had found herself at a stalemate within her own mind), and Amina was almost totally unaware of Hazel’s feelings (almost totally unaware of Hazel altogether - not in a cruel way, just in the way that you don’t notice the sun setting until the sky is already half dark). Weeks would come and go, Hazel’s insecurities simmering underneath the surface of her skin (her face so very red, like she was embarrassed)  ~~ (she was, she was always so embarrassed of the way she felt) ~~ as Amina’s casual (causal, really) confidence shimmered on the surface of her skin. Hazel felt like darkness where Amina was light (perhaps that what always felt so wrong to her, she always was prone to feeling down)  ~~ (Amina always felt so very ‘up’) ~~ .

For all that Hazel avoided Amina (and Daisy, always Daisy), there came a point where the two actively sought her out - afterall, in a school with a relatively low student population, a student who is never seen is a rarity (and they’re so, so curious about the girl who looks at them with such hopeless longing and sour contempt). They followed her around the school, almost the reverse of how for months Hazel had moved around the school in opposition to them; they never spoke,and they rarely crossed paths (but they smiled sometimes, they smiled at each other and once Daisy slipped her an apologetic note). It wasn’t quite a friendship - but it was a tentative nothing that felt almost blissfully relaxing after months of paranoid anxiety, and it wasn’t quite perfect (nothing ever quite is) - but Hazel felt included, and really that’s what she wanted (it’s everything she wanted, almost).

**Author's Note:**

> A quick half-hearted attempt at character exploration, based off a headcanon (?) of mine where Hazel is jealous of Amina (I think with Hazel’s canon identity/confidence issues it makes sense for her to be jealous of Amina for fitting in when we know that Hazel has had difficulties with that since the very start of the series).
> 
> I also tried to characterise Hazel’s self-esteem issues without relying too heavily on the character of Daisy, as we often see her compare herself to Daisy (and I thought that seeing Hazel view Amina in a similar way was a bit of an interesting take).


End file.
